Meltdown
by Ninjagrrl
Summary: AU for the final episode. In the heart of Touda's flames, Hisoka tried to take Tsuzuki's pain away and the empath's own mind broke under the overload. In progress.
1. Chapter 1

Meltdown

Author's Notes – Not manga based, AU for the final episode of the anime. This chapter is fairly short, but it's just an introduction for what is currently looking to be around six chapters or so.

Disclaimer – I don't own any of the recognisable characters or concepts. No copyright infringement is intended and no profit is being made.

- - -

Tatsumi's shadows had caught Tsuzuki up and wrapped him safely in soft, intangible darkness seconds before the building came crumbling down around them, but in his dreams, Tsuzuki still knelt in the centre of his own funeral pyre.

Muraki's laboratory had been plunged into chaos. Touda's eerie screeches split the air as glass, metal, concrete all exploded into fire under Tsuzuki's will. He was at the very centre of the madness, a willing sacrifice kneeling in the heart and eye of the storm he orchestrated around him. The superheated air was whipped into a fury by the unnatural breezes he had called up, a lethal maelstrom of flames capable of consuming anything in its path, but Tsuzuki could feel none of the heat and no fear either, even as he stared straight into the heart of the destruction around him. There was a very still, safe place right at the core of his being where he had retreated to now, and nothing could reach him there.

Muraki was still alive. The fire had yet to take him and he began to stir, the crackle and roar of the flames drowning out the sound as he came round, choking up mouthfuls of his own blood. One pale hand clenched, slowly dragging himself up until he managed to stand, almost bent double, his silver hair trapping the flickering red and gold of Touda's cleansing flames. The floor at his feet was soaked crimson, and he spat blood and shot Tsuzuki a hateful look. A faint flickering light began to stir around him, the beginnings of a teleport spell too weak to do anything.

Something heavy crashed down from the ceiling and shattered into splinters inches from where Muraki stood and the doctor stumbled, falling back to his knees as though in prayer. A faint smile crossed Tsuzuki's face as he reached out to Muraki, and Touda's coils wrapped around the two of them, sealing them inexorably in an unholy circle of smoke and flame.

"We are the descendants of darkness," He said simply, meeting Muraki's mismatched eyes. There was no hatred or malice in his voice, not any more. "Die with me,"

Tsuzuki knelt there as the shikigami's otherworldly flames began to close in, and it felt like coming home. This was the natural concluding scene in their drawn-out little psychodrama. He and Muraki were nothing but two sides of one coin, both pledged to save and doomed to kill. Muraki had been made, but he was born this way, and some things could not be reforged by any flame. He was a mongrel caught between two worlds, an anomaly in space and time, a mistake that should never have been allowed to draw its first cursed breath. He had walked amongst humans in their own form and brought them only misery wherever his shadow had fallen, and now he was too tired to keep fighting against the legacy written in his own warped DNA. Misfortune's child, cursed from birth, bad luck and malice running in his veins. He had tried to let the poison out time and time again, only to be dragged back from the brink of death by his own treacherous, unnatural nature.

Touda reared up before him, the shikigami's dark eyes reflecting back fathomless depths of fire and ruin, eyes that had watched countless dynasties fall and kingdoms crumble to dust. One could lose themselves forever there, in the heart of those flames. He opened his arms to the cleansing fire and before it consumed him, the last things he saw were two heart-breakingly clear green eyes, the only thing still in the middle of all the madness.

_I won't let you lose yourself like this_

He woke up abruptly, back in one of the medical rooms in the Summons Division. The flames from his dreams instantly melted away in the cool, still surroundings. Everything here was calm and clear- white walls, crisp sheets, the window framing a wash of creamy cherry blossom against a pastel sky. The silence was only broken by the soft sounds of distant birdsong and a machine to his side emitting a mild beeping every so often as it monitored his heart rate. Tsuzuki lay there for a second, disorientated. He felt a little strange, bruised and raw and somehow cleansed, as though he had been flayed open to the core and some anomaly had been cut out and drained.

"Tsuzuki?" Tatsumi came awake, sat in a chair besides the bed. There were deep smudges like bruises underneath his weary eyes, and something too gentle in his voice. Everything came back to Tsuzuki then, and he sat up, shoving the sheets back.

"Did Hisoka get out okay?"

There was the faintest tremor across Tatsumi's calm features at the mention of Hisoka's name. "I think it's best if you talk to Watari about that," He said as he stood, leaving the room and returning a moment later with the scientist at his side. Watari crossed the room and stood there for a moment. His hair had almost entirely came loose from its ponytail, and he had the same exhausted look about him as Tatsumi.

"Glad to see you're awake so early, Tsuzuki," Watari said, his voice more subdued than normal. "Tatsumi managed to get you out complete unhurt, and there's no reason at all why you won't make a full recovery in time,"

"What about Hisoka?"

Watari looked uncomfortable. "Physically, Hisoka is fine. Touda's flames didn't touch him. But mentally.." He sat down on the bed next to Tsuzuki and cleared his throat. "He is in a bad way, Tsuzuki,"

"What happened?" Tsuzuki demanded, Watari flinching minutely from him.

"Well, we really don't know," Watari took off his glasses and began polishing them, clearly agitated. His honey-coloured eyes were flickering everywhere, except to meet Tsuzuki's own. "We've never had anything like this happen before. I'm not familiar with empaths either, and knowing just one is hardly a representative sample to draw conclusions from-"

"What happened?" Tsuzuki asked again, his voice very still and his eyes suddenly clear and focused.

"We think seeing you in pain was too much for Hisoka to handle, and we do know that empathy can be turned on others- whether to hurt or to heal. That much is quite well documented, and you've seen for yourself how taking on another's emotions could affect an empath. As for Hisoka.. this is purely in the realms of speculation, but the hypothesis is that somehow, he attempted to absorb all your pain and it caused some kind of an overload. A breakdown, if you will,"

"He tried to take the pain away, and it was too much for him to cope with," Tatsumi clarified.

"Take me to him," Tsuzuki said, struggling out of the neatly folded blankets. Watari wrung his hands together, looked anguished and then apparently decided not to say anything. He turned silently and lead them down the hall towards another room, his little owl nestled against his hair, quiet and still for once.

"Hisoka?" Watari asked, unsure. The bed there was empty and rumpled. An IV tube lay coiled on itself, spattering red drops onto the white sheets. For one moment, Tsuzuki found himself idiotically wondering what that was doing there. They had said he was physically fine and Hisoka was a shinigami anyway, he'd have to be very ill to need an IV. Perhaps it was just Watari fussing to try and keep himself busy, monitoring heart signs and breathing rate, finding comfort in the stability of safe, physical things that one could easily fix.

Then the sight of white crumpled empty sheets spattered with red hit him hard and he swayed, one hand on the door frame to steady himself.

"It's okay," Watari was saying over and over, to Hisoka or Tsuzuki, he didn't know. The scientist had crossed over to the other side of the bed and was standing there awkwardly looking at something on the floor, first leaning forward with his arms outstretched, then drawing back hesitantly.

"Here," Tatsumi said quietly, one hand on Watari's shoulder and moving the scientist back out of the way. "Come on, Hisoka,"

"Hisoka?" Tsuzuki asked, his voice catching in his throat. The other shinigami bent down and then straightened carefully, cradling the boy in his arms as though he was very, very fragile. He turned to face the others. Hisoka's hand was clenched in Tatsumi's shirt as though it was a lifeline. His eyes were as brittle and empty as green glass, and they saw nothing.


	2. Chapter 2

Meltdown

Author's Notes- Oh wow, thank you for the response! I get discouraged pretty easily when writing fanfiction, especially since a lot of my stuff only gets one or two reviews after being up for a good while. In fact, there's folders full of fic I've never uploaded because I get so paranoid about it. Getting six reviews over a day is pretty amazing by my standards.

If anyone's interested in what's actually wrong with Hisoka, I've taken considerable liberties with the symptoms since he's an empath and therefore I can make stuff up, but it's based loosely on several concepts and disorders- dissociation, emotional detachment, psychogenic amnesia, PTSD, nervous breakdowns, near-catatonia, derealisation (a loss of sense of reality) and mild regression.

Disclaimer- I don't own any of the recognisable characters or concepts. No copyright infringement is intended and no profit is being made. There's also a line and some imagery lifted from the anime, but they're pretty obvious.

- - -

Hisoka was lost.

He wandered through an distant, dreamlike world of his own creation, caught somewhere between the living and complete oblivion. He didn't know where he was, and Hisoka didn't care if he ever found his way out again. It was safer here, where everything was subdued and too far away to ever care about again. Sometimes he drifted into a kind of half-consciousness, the world outside superimposed over this one as ghostly as a double exposure, but the sounds were muted and everything around him was as faded and flat as a sun-bleached photograph, and there was nothing to bind him there. No one could reach him here now, nothing except fragments of old memories.

_Those who live in darkness, wander aimlessly_.

Sometimes he remembered the events in Muraki's laboratory, in a strange, detached way as though watching someone else's actions from a great distance. Traces of those memories occasionally drifted through his mind, no more tangible than a trick of light and shadows, and he let them fragment and reform themselves over and over again. He thought briefly of clear violet eyes, of dark silky hair scented like cinnamon, of fluttering _ofuda _magic written in blood red ink,but there was too much pain there in the heart of those otherworld flames, and the thoughts scattered away from him.

He drifted in and out of consciousness, only loosely tethered to the physical world around him and little more than a ghost trapped in an organic machine. The last time he woke up, he heard the distant beep of hospital noises around him and felt the curse scars flare up and flood with sudden raw heat, three long years of old pain still burning down to his core. The hospital room was different, but they were all the same place in the end. They were places of pain, of blazing white electrical light, of flowers that wilted and were never replaced as the years went by. He struggled free, pulling the IV carelessly from his arm with a small sting that went unnoticed against the searing curse scars. Hisoka didn't get very far before he collapsed, trembling besides the bed. There was no escape from this room.

But he didn't have to see it any more.

Hisoka let himself retreat backwards until the medical room seemed very tiny and far away, and he watched from a distance as Watari attended to that other Hisoka. The memories he had of the scientist were already beginning to scatter and lose themselves like cherry blossom petals in the wind. He dimly remembered Watari's golden, slightly feline eyes, the twittering as his tiny owl fluttered around him, the calming presence Hisoka always sensed around him despite his cheerful, upbeat nature.

The medical room shrank to nothing but a pinprick of light in soft endless darkness, and then winked out of existence altogether. For a second, he could still hear the muted sounds of Watari going about his business, and then he was entirely alone.

Hisoka turned around, and found himself somewhere that he recognised.

The darkness here was familiar and he breathed in air wet and spoiled with the scent of decaying leaves and the inexorable rising damp of stone that hadn't seen sunlight since it was hewed and laid several human lifetimes before. He crouched on a floor slippery and mottled black from some spreading mould, draining the warmth from his skin wherever it touched. There was absolute silence, completely shut off from the house above. Hisoka could sense nothing else alive here but simple fungi and transparent crawling things and white swollen toads, all feeding on each other in the damp world down here. Years of pain had soaked into the walls of the place, and he flinched away from it. This was not somewhere he wanted to be.

He went back further into the darkness and found himself in a field of white flowers.

There were no immediate bad memories here, but he still felt a prickle of unease. Hisoka glanced around, but the basement had entirely disappeared and there were nothing now but a smooth unbroken blanket of white flowers stretching as far as he could see, a sweet balmy fragrance heavy in the air. The white blooms were only broken by someone kneeling at their very core, nothing visible but their bowed back. Hisoka began to pick his way towards the figure, the thorns raising thin scratches on his bare arms as he brushed the roses aside.

The scent began to get too heavy and cloying, unbroken by any breezes. He waded closer towards the person, taking shallow breaths of the syrupy air. There was something underneath the roses' fragrance, some spoiled and rotten undernote like blood kept in a bottle or fruit gone soft and rotten. Hisoka glanced down. The roses were white and lovely, but now he could see how blood pooled in the cupped blossoms and a tiny butterfly corpse was impaled on each thorn. Some of them were still struggling to free themselves, tiny jewelled wings fluttering weakly as their lives ebbed away.

"Tsuzuki?" He asked. The kneeling figure stiffened slightly, and turned their attention back towards the roses. Two bloodied, scratched hands raised, carefully cradling something tiny and precious between them and a struggling butterfly fluttered weakly from the person's hands, the wings torn and ruined. It rose into the air once, twice, three times, sinking lower every time, and then disappeared back into the tangled thorns. Hisoka wondered why something so pathetic fought so hard to hold onto its life.

"You can't save them," Hisoka said to the person's back, as they went back to their work. He glanced down, unmoved by their tiny efforts to free themselves. Everything alive fought so hard just to keep on living, but every butterfly he freed would only sink back into the thorns a short flight later. You could never really save them at all.

- - -

Watari whisked away the bloodied sheets and replaced them, while Tatsumi gently lowered Hisoka back down onto the crisp, white bed. He carefully untangled Hisoka's fingers from where they had grasped his shirt, so tightly the skin had gone bleached-white.

"Hisoka?" Watari asked, holding a small pen light. "Hisoka?"

Eventually, the boy turned fractionally towards the scientist although his gaze remained unfocused and somehow disconnected. He didn't flinch as the light shone in his eyes, the dilated pupils slowly contracting back to normal size.

"He's reacting perfectly normally," Watari said helplessly, clicking his light back off. "There's no physical reason why he isn't there. He's just chosen not to,"

"I did this?" Tsuzuki's voice sounded very small.

"No one blames you, Tsuzuki," Tatsumi's face looked tired and suddenly old. "Hisoka knew what he was doing,"

"He couldn't," Tsuzuki said quietly, looking down at the bed. Hisoka had slowly lay back against the pillows as Tatsumi guided him. The long illness before death had always left Hisoka pale and somewhat delicate, but now he looked so brittle and colourless he hardly seemed to be there at all. His image rose ghostlike out of the soft white background, barely disturbing the smooth blankness of sheet and pillow, as insubstantial as mist and spiderwebs. "Not this,"

"Hisoka was.." Tatsumi started, a pained expression crossing his face at the unintentional use of the past tense. "Hisoka _is_ a very intelligent young man. I believe he knew fully what he was letting himself in for, and would do it again for you if he could,"

"You've done the same for him before, Tsuzuki," Watari spoke up. "You've walked straight into traps for Hisoka. You threw yourself in front of one of Muraki's creatures to save him-"

"Well, yes, but-" Tsuzuki started, flustered. Doing anything else had never even crossed his mind.

Tatsumi cut him off. "How about Watari? Myself? Princess Tsubaki? What about that girl? You tried to call back Suzaku to save her life, knowing that doing so could have meant the end of you. You would have sacrificed yourself rather than see another person hurt, is that not correct?"

Tsuzuki was silent.

"So maybe Hisoka wanted to do the same thing for you. You've given him far more than you realise, Tsuzuki. He isn't very good at showing it, but the kid really cares about you," Watari placed a hand on Tsuzuki's shoulder, and he leaned against the scientist for support, breathing in the clear sunlight scent that Watari's hair always seemed to trap. He let the words break over him, but no matter what they murmured, Hisoka was still as lifeless as one of Muraki's dolls.

"We'll find a way out," Watari assured him. "I'm no psychologist, but I'm working on it. The GuShoShin twins have been helping me to find similar cases reported in the living,"

"I think it's probably for the best if we keep Hisoka in a familiar environment," Tatsumi said. "The Summons Department is probably the closest thing to home he's ever had. Consider yourself temporarily retired from field duty. You need a break yourself anyway, and Watari and I can cover your sector,"

"Thank you, Tatsumi," Tsuzuki said quietly. Paperwork wasn't his strong point, but he knew how much of a gesture the secretary was making by handing over his neatly filed reports and meticulously balanced budgets into someone else's care.

"It's fine," Tatsumi brushed away his thanks. "We'll give you two some time alone,"

Tsuzuki sat there for a moment besides the bed. Before leaving, Watari reluctantly filled him in on everything that had happened, and explained that while Hisoka was quite often conscious, he seemed barely aware of anything around him and was often tormented by something that none of them could fix.

"It may be distressing," He said, eyes flickering to Tatsumi as though hoping for the secretary to order Tsuzuki to go home. "There's nothing you can really do for him whether you're here or not,"

Hisoka was seemingly unconscious at the moment, eyelids flickering in some shallow, uneasy sleep. The sun was beginning to set, and the light danced like fireflies in his pale gold hair. Tsuzuki dabbled a tissue in a water glass and leaned forward, wiping away whatever had matted together Hisoka's dark eyelashes. Hisoka opened his eyes reflexively, and for a moment Tsuzuki entertained the hope that Hisoka might knock his hand aside and come out with some caustic remark. But his eyes still had the same withdrawn, haunted look that he'd seen earlier, eyes darkened to the colour of graveyard mosses and deep, still waters.

"I'm sorry," Tsuzuki said quietly, and stood.

He went outside alone, and stood underneath the cherry blossom that surrounded the buildings. It was beautiful here, the trees heavy with creamy flower all year round. The cherry blossoms were inexorably linked with death, and perhaps it wasn't so surprising that they flourished here around these buildings while their lives were so fleeting everywhere else on earth. The sun was lower now, and the fading light tinged each petal, staining them a rich red. Tsuzuki stared into the setting sun until his eyes burned and the pain from the clear gold light obliterated every thought and consumed it in the sun's dying light.

"Tsuzuki?" Tatsumi came up besides him quietly. The approaching darkness retreated respectfully from the shadow master and left them in a circle illuminated by the last of the day's light. "I understand how difficult this is, and I'm not going to force you to do anything you don't want to. But I think you and Hisoka need to spend some time together, for your own sake as much as his,"

"How can I go near him?" Tsuzuki asked, anguished. "How can I spend time with him when I was the one who broke him? I don't know if I'll just hurt him more,"

"Because he wants you there, Tsuzuki," Tatsumi said. He stood next to Tsuzuki, not looking at him. "He did this for you. You can't abandon him now,"

"I don't.." Tsuzuki faltered.

"I know you didn't," Tatsumi said. "You're trying to keep him safe. I understand," There was a long moment of silence between them as they watched the light flood the sky with a wash of red and gold. Something was clearly on Tatsumi's mind.

"Do you think you can forgive me for this?" He asked suddenly. Tsuzuki turned to look at him, confused.

"I stood by and did nothing," The secretary said, his voice suddenly desolate. A shadow crept upwards respectfully, shielding his face in darkness as he half-turned away from Tsuzuki. "I thought I was respecting your wishes. I wanted you to be happy more than anything, no matter how you found peace. But it was just like when we worked together. I couldn't cope, and I couldn't stand the thought of you hating me and knowing that I was the one to make you keep on suffering against your own will," He paused. "Hisoka was the only one who didn't turn away in the face of all that pain,"

"Yeah," Tsuzuki said faintly, his voice weak and far away. "He's quite a kid,"

"Take him home with you, Tsuzuki," Tatsumi said. "Hisoka already has enough bad memories in hospitals, and there's nothing else that Watari can possible do for him there,"

They walked back towards the building in silence. Watari was back in the medical room. He'd brought in a stack of paperwork to keep himself busy while watching over Hisoka. The shinigami was now seemingly awake, sat bolt upright with his arms resting over his drawn up knees, staring out the window into an evening sky tinged the colour of blood and flame.

"I think Hisoka should stay with Tsuzuki," Tatsumi said quietly to Watari while Tsuzuki crossed over to the bed and sat besides his silent partner.

Watari nodded slowly, uncertain. "There's nothing we can do here. It's just.." He looked troubled, and lowered his voice to a whisper. "It's Tsuzuki I'm worried about. Do you really think he can handle this? It's a lot of guilt for him to take, and only yesterday he tried to end everything. It's going to take him a long time to heal, and I'm not sure we should give him any more stress right now,"

Tatsumi's sigh was weary. "At this rate, we're going to lose him anyway, Watari. He can't take much more blood on his hands, whether it's his fault or not. I'm hoping it'll give him something to live for,"

Watari nodded again and began to shuffle his paperwork and pack it up, silently giving his consent. Tsuzuki glanced over to the pair of them questioningly, and Tatsumi crossed over to help him.

There was no need to carry him. Hisoka didn't respond to the sound of Tsuzuki's voice, but he came easily enough when Tsuzuki gently caught his wrist and lead him from the room. He followed as docile and passively as a doll, his skin cool to the touch. Watari and Tatsumi silently followed them to the door and watched as the two damaged shinigami left the building and went outside, into the softly approaching night.


	3. Chapter 3

Meltdown

Author's Notes – Thanks again for the continued support! This is going far easier than most of my fics, probably because I'm actually motivated to keep writing it. I've uploaded two chapters at once, since I find this one a little slow.

Disclaimer – I don't own any of the recognisable characters or concepts. No profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended.

- - -

"Well, here we are," Tsuzuki said as they arrived at his apartment, and he realised with a sudden rush of guilt that he'd never taken Hisoka to his home before. Tatsumi had offered to go pick up some of Hisoka's clothes and so presumably, Hisoka had lived alone in one of the apartments around the Judgement Bureau. Tsuzuki had always thought the young shinigami would value his own space too much to share it with another, but at the moment sixteen seemed a very young age to live alone.

"It's not much," He said apologetically, even though Hisoka was somewhere beyond noticing his surrounding, let alone caring about them. The apartment was a mess, and he made a note to tidy it up for Hisoka. His partner had thrived on order and routine. He had a small desk in the Summons Department which was almost frighteningly neat and empty, with nothing kept there but a stack of reports, an organiser, a box of paperclips and a handful of black pens. Everyone else personalised their work space. Watari's laboratory was scattered with blueprints and half-finished projects and post-it notes, and decorated with toys he had made, postcards from Kyoto and photographs from the department's Christmas party. Tsuzuki's desk was barely visible under amusing souvenirs, dozens of coloured pens that had mostly dried up a long time ago and boxes of takeaway and desserts, and the wall around it was taped with articles and pictures and anything else he found interesting to look at. Even Tatsumi had a watercolour print above his desk and a small, beautifully framed photo of a woman Tsuzuki presumed was his mother. Something about Hisoka's obsessively tidy desk had always bothered Tsuzuki. He'd asked once why Hisoka didn't decorate it in the same way the others did, only to get a withering look and be told it was a place for work, not relaxation.

He lead the way into his small living room and released Hisoka's wrist. The boy stopped and stood there, unmoving. He had followed obediently all the way from the Summons Department, without resistance or any eagerness. Tsuzuki had wondered if he'd be able to cope with stairs, but Hisoka had climbed them mechanically, still without showing any real awareness of his surroundings. Tsuzuki glanced down at his hand, and remembered, guiltily, how violently Hisoka had reacted that time he had touched him and sparked off his empathy. At first he'd thought his partner couldn't stand to be near him, and though it hurt, that was something Tsuzuki was almost used to. Hisoka had always looked at him so coldly, with brilliant green eyes that held the indifferent cool fire of diamonds. He'd regretted it when he realised later how something as simple as touch could pain Hisoka. Now there was no reaction at all.

"You just don't care any more, do you?" Tsuzuki murmured, and Hisoka looked right through him with eyes now as dim as dusty malachite. He wondered not for the first time how he was supposed to do anything, how the most damaged man in the department was supposed to help put someone else back together again.

"I can't look after someone else," Tsuzuki whispered quietly to himself. "I've failed them all," And then he turned back to Hisoka, and managed a weak, watery smile, as much for his own benefit as his partner's. Tsuzuki had seventy long years' practise in keeping up a cheerful front. Sometimes he could even convince himself that there was nothing more to Tsuzuki than the permanently cheerful department slacker. He crossed the room to put the TV on for background noise, pulled out the folder he'd brought back with him, and managed to clear some space on a table to work. He glanced up. Hisoka was still standing there.

"Sit down," Tsuzuki said, and after a minute or two, Hisoka did. "Make yourself at home," He added hopefully, not expecting a response.

Tatsumi had already done most of the work. He always worked ahead of schedule, and so Tsuzuki could afford to fall a little behind before the sector suffered. But he didn't want to leave the secretary any extra work, not when Tatsumi had always done everything he could for Tsuzuki. It was a small repayment, these columns of neatly balanced numbers, but it was all he could do for now.

He managed perhaps fifteen minutes of work before the numbers began to run together into a senseless jumble. Tsuzuki could spend hours carefully painting ofuda magic in brilliant inks, infusing the paper with spells, but he couldn't find sense in these columns of figures and mysterious abbreviations. He left his work for a moment to bring Hisoka a blanket, even though his apartment was quite warm enough, and paused by the kitchen to make tea. Hisoka took plain green tea, and Tsuzuki liked black tea with plenty of sugar and cream.

He came back and placed the cup next to Hisoka. While he was gone, the shinigami had moved slightly. Hisoka had pulled himself away from the edges of the sofa, to curl up protectively against the cushions with his arms around his knees. His eyes had lost their fixed stare, an uneasy green light now flickering in them as he glanced fretfully around the room. When Tsuzuki moved in front of him, he flinched slightly. For a moment, Tsuzuki felt some slight relief that at least Hisoka was showing signs of awareness.

"Hisoka?" He asked, and sat down on the sofa next to him, draping the blanket over Hisoka's shoulders. He'd unconsciously chosen the brightest blanket he had, a garishly patterned scarlet thing with a multicoloured fringe that he'd brought back as a souvenir once. Hisoka would hate it, but right now he wanted to surround the boy in colour and warmth and bright surroundings, as though that could melt away the barrier between Hisoka and the world around him. He turned Hisoka's face towards his own and looked into his eyes, and watched as Hisoka turned his gaze away, agitated.

"It's just me," Tsuzuki said, his voice cracking a little. He couldn't think what else to say, of what words could possibly cross the sudden distance that had fallen between them, and so he simply sat there and repeated himself. Hisoka's gaze slid back to the corner of the room and focused on something far away, and the spark of awareness was gone.

It was difficult for Tsuzuki to concentrate on his work with Hisoka there. It wasn't distracting in the usual way a person might be. He made no sudden movements or loud noises, the soft sound of his light, uncertain breathing barely disturbing the air at all. Neither could Tsuzuki feel his gaze upon him, and that was what troubled him the most. As a shinigami, he was even more sensitive towards the presence of life in his surroundings, and now he sensed nothing in the room with him at all.

"OK," Tsuzuki said, as cheerfully as he could manage, giving up for the evening. "I have a spare room, but it's full of junk so you'll have to put up with me," There was as much stuff piled in his own bedroom as there was in the spare room, but he wanted to stay near Hisoka right now. He went to push the other Western style bed from the spare room into his own, then threw a few armfuls of clothes out of the way. It was still a mess, but Tsuzuki didn't want to spend too long away up here tidying. He had an uneasy feeling that if he was gone too long, Hisoka might disappear altogether.

Hisoka didn't seem to fall asleep, exactly. Tsuzuki watched for a while, but his eyes remained open and staring dreamily into the ceiling. After an hour or so had passed, Tsuzuki got back up and wandered around his apartment. He double-checked the doors were locked, fastened the windows with a key he had never used before, turned off and unplugged all appliances he could, and after a moment's pause, moved all the kitchen knives first into the freezer and then the washing machine, anywhere he thought they wouldn't be found. He doubted Hisoka would do anything except lie there all night, but there was nothing else he could do for him, and the small gesture settled his mind a little.

He went back into the bedroom, and the thin thread of light as he opened the door shone across Hisoka's eyes, still open. Tsuzuki's dreams were uneasy that night.

They usually were. He could hide a lot behind a smile, a flippant remark, a reputation as the department's joker. Always late, always over budget, always smiling and blundering through somehow anyway. But when he slept, there was no one left to fool and that was when the nightmares came out. He tossed and turned uneasily as old demons began to stir, and Tsuzuki went back to the field of white roses.

"Oh, you're back again," His younger self looked up at him with clear, guileless eyes. "I'm not really surprised. We all knew you were too selfish to end yourself,"

"Hisoka needs me," Tsuzuki said simply.

"Don't you think you've hurt him enough?" The other Tsuzuki asked, offering him a cut white rose. The stem bled, open and wet like an amputated limb. He had seen plenty of amputated limbs in his time. He had severed Hisoka's arm himself, under the control of the demon Sagatanas.

"He brought me back," Tsuzuki said. "Now I'm going to bring him back too,"

"Just like you helped all the others?" His younger doppleganger asked, his face as fresh and innocent as any child's, with only those hated violet eyes giving away his heritage. "You can't help humans, Tsuzuki. It's just not in your nature,"

And suddenly it wasn't Tsuzuki any more, it was the face of the two schoolgirls who had died simply by association, of Princess Tsubaki, the victims of Maria Wong, of Kazusa. He had never forgotten one of the faces of the people he had failed.

"I don't want to go back any further," Tsuzuki whispered. The face began to melt and reshape itself once again, and he didn't want to see what came next. He had a feeling that one day, he'd go over the edge and wouldn't come back at all this time. He'd had eight long years of insanity in life, seventy years coping with it after death, and each time he fell it got a little harder to claw his way back. There were only so many times that a mind could fall into ruins and rebuild itself, before the foundations themselves became too damaged.

He was mercifully woken up then by a sudden, startled cry in the darkness.

"Hisoka?" He called out, throwing back his covers.

Hisoka was shaking silently, sat tense and upright wrapped in his blankets as though the thin fabric could hold any kind of protection against what troubled him now. The night had cast his face into shadow, and all Tsuzuki could see clearly were his eyes, pupils dilated so deep they had almost entirely consumed the green in darkness. Hisoka looked up, and for a second his eyes focused on Tsuzuki and something crossed his face then, something lost and lonely.

"Tsu-" He began, his voice thin and broken, and Tsuzuki came.

Hisoka watched him cross the room, his hands twisted in the bright blanket and even in the moon's diluted half-light, Tsuzuki could see the uneasy tremor that constantly ran through them. He faltered for a second as Hisoka's eyes widened minutely, in fear or recognition, and he couldn't tell which.

Tsuzuki sat down on the bed, in turmoil. Hisoka was still shaking and scared, and he desperately wanted to hold him. He reached out, wondering if he was doing the right thing or if he would only hurt Hisoka more. There was a pause, Hisoka's eyes anguished and too wide in the moonlight, and then the boy threw himself into Tsuzuki's arms. He felt the hot rush of tears against his chest, and his own eyes stung as he bowed his head to rest his cheek against Hisoka's tousled head. "It's going to be okay," He murmured into pale gold hair, the colour of sun-bleached wheat fields and watery dawn light.

Hisoka loosened his hand from where he gripped the blankets and reached out, trembling, to put his hand against Tsuzuki's chest, fingers spreading like a blossoming flower over his heart.

"How is it possible for someone to hurt so much?" Hisoka murmured, his voice very far away.

"Hisoka?" Tsuzuki asked desperately, turning the shinigami's face up to look at him. But Hisoka had already retreated back to wherever he went, and his eyes rolled back in his head sightlessly.

- - -

In the morning, Hisoka had withdrawn again after his sudden outburst. Tsuzuki awoke to find Hisoka standing next to the window staring into the dawn. He wore a distant, faintly eerie smile, but there was no recognition in his eyes and he didn't flinch when Tsuzuki touched his shoulder, or resist when Tsuzuki slowly brought him back towards the Summons Department later in the morning. Watari offered to keep an eye on Hisoka if Tsuzuki was busy, and he gratefully accepted. Hisoka wouldn't distract him from his work and he certainly didn't grudge looking after his partner, but there was still the lingering fear that he would inevitably fail yet another person. He trusted Watari. Despite his eccentric nature, and his interest in the purely logical and measurable things in life, the scientist could be surprisingly gentle at times.

Tsuzuki spent two hours hard at work, and thought he'd managed to get a decent head start. He read through his work once or twice, and didn't see any obvious errors. The last thing Tsuzuki wanted was for Tatsumi to return from field duty and have to start again on his paperwork. But he didn't want Watari to fall behind either, and so he set back to the laboratory once he'd got a good start, and knocked. Watari answered the door after a second. He didn't look anywhere near as dishevelled as he usually did by this time of day, his lab coat surprisingly clean with no new stains or suspicious burns, his hair not held back by protective goggles. He could see Hisoka's dusky blonde hair in the background.

Tsuzuki caught Watari's wrist and pulled the scientist out of the laboratory. He looked slightly bemused, but came.

"How is he?" Tsuzuki asked quietly.

Watari shrugged, his eyes somewhat guarded. He wasn't used to handling such matters delicately. He usually described deaths, strange occurrences and illnesses with the slightly detached, curious air of a true scientist. Watari may be kind-hearted towards his fellow shinigami, but he rarely got involved with cases in the same way Tsuzuki did. "He's tracking some movements, but there's no way to tell if he really knows what's going on. I've been showing him some of my recent inventions- nothing dangerous, of course,"

Tsuzuki nodded. Hisoka had always got on well enough with Watari. They both treasured logic and deduction, although the scientist had a somewhat scatty approach to his work, often going off on a whim rather than strictly following orders. Tsuzuki liked the idea of Hisoka sat in the sunlit laboratory listening to the whirring of mechanical toys as Watari demonstrated them and carried out a soothing speech on one theory or another. It was no place for nightmares.

"He spoke a little, last night," Tsuzuki said hopefully. "He woke up frightened by something. I held him, and it sounded as though he knew who I was,"

"That's good," Watari said as positively as he could, but the shinigami was a poor liar and Tsuzuki saw through it. He kept quiet though, and the awkward moment was suddenly broken as 003 suddenly came up from behind Watari and hovered in the air, twittering frantically. "One minute, 003," Watari said absently, and then winced as the little owl nipped him sharply. "Ouch! What is it?" He turned to look at the bird as she flew back into the laboratory.

Hisoka was gone.

Watari was left to alert the others in the department as Tsuzuki took off. Hisoka wasn't anywhere in the laboratory, or back in the offices in the Summons Department. The GuShoShin twins had been in the library and restricted areas, and they assured Tsuzuki that no one had came this way. It wasn't until he ran back through Watari's laboratory to look in the departments lying to the other side of the room that he glanced out the window. He was used to the sight after seventy years working here, but only now did he see anything sinister in the surroundings.

Cherry blossom.

Watari was prone to laboratory accidents, and there were three separate fire doors in the one room, all leading outside. Not caring whether it would set off the alarm, Tsuzuki went straight out the nearest exit and into the Judgement Bureau gardens. He had an unpleasant feeling that was where Hisoka would be.

It was a beautiful morning outside, or at least most people would have thought so. Tsuzuki had no time to appreciate it. The sun was just building up to its zenith and spilled over the gardens with a golden, almost syrupy light. The last of the dew had evaporated some time ago, and now the heated air was thick with the scent of blossom. Usually, cherry blossom had quite a light, springlike fragrance. Tsuzuki had never noticed how heavy it was around here, where the flowers never died and the air could never clear.

"Hisoka?" He called out. There was almost complete silence here, and that made him uneasy. It was easy to forget this wasn't a place for the living. A breeze ruffled the trees around him, filling the air with whirling white petals and fragmenting the scene. He pushed on through it, heading deeper into the trees. The further he went, the closer they seemed to grow. Tsuzuki had never realised how easily you could lose yourself here, in a maze of slender black trees and dense creamy blossom.

Hisoka was kneeling underneath one of the trees with his back to Tsuzuki. He slowed down as he approached the shinigami, not wanting to startle him. Even his footsteps were nearly silent out here, where a softly insulating layer of blossom lay like thick snow over the grass. Tsuzuki called out Hisoka's name, but he didn't look up from the ground. The sunlight broke golden over his bowed head and gave his champagne blonde hair a tawny glow. Tsuzuki came up behind him slowly. He could see how tense Hisoka was, his shoulder blades sharp through his clothes and his fingers twisted in the unclipped grass and scattered blossom. Hisoka turned his hand over, creamy petals cupped there like snow.

Tsuzuki knelt next to him, not wanting to reach out and touch him. Hisoka had a faint, confused expression that made him look younger, not so composed as usual. It reminded Tsuzuki of the words Hisoka had spoken to him some time ago, when he confessed that he became a shinigami to find out why he had to die. There was no answer then, and there was no answer now. Muraki was somewhat of a wild card amongst the ordered world of the Judgement Bureau. He didn't care for the natural order of things, for a candle still burning bright and strong. Hisoka could spend his entire afterlife chasing his murderer and there would never be any answer that could satisfy him.

"Hey," Tsuzuki said quietly, hoping to guide Hisoka out of whatever memory troubled him now. Hisoka glanced at him quickly and swallowed hard. He was trembling visibly now, blossom spilling from his hands like melting snow.

"I can't ever get away-" Hisoka began to speak, and then fainted, landing without a sound in the drifts of fallen petals.

- - -

"I've put a spell around the entire department," Tatsumi said quietly to Tsuzuki. Hisoka was subdued once again, and he spoke no more. Tsuzuki had taken him back to the infirmary, and Watari confirmed that he was physically fine. "It's nothing powerful, but it'll take some effort for a shinigami to pass through. I've sent memos to every other department and they understand,"

Tsuzuki looked troubled. "I don't like the idea of keeping him caged, but I guess it's necessary. He passed a hand across his eyes, tired. An afterimage of cherry blossom flashed, tinted red by the fine blood vessels in his eyelids. "I don't want him to hurt any more,"


	4. Chapter 4

Meltdown

Author's Notes- It's taking surprisingly long to get this going- although the fic isn't actually set over a long time span, it's taking a few chapters to build up. I promise it won't be (or at least, it's not _intended_ to be) six or seven chapters of pure hardcore wangst.

Disclaimers – I don't own any of the recognisable characters or concepts. No profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended.

Two more days passed with little change. Tsuzuki didn't leave Hisoka alone, unless it was in the company of the other shinigami in the department. There was another of the traumatised episodes when Hisoka came round shaking and terrified by something that Tsuzuki couldn't stop. He would throw himself in front of summoned demons, walk into traps and confront Muraki alone, but this was a different kind of battle and Tsuzuki was lost. All he could do was sit there uselessly, murmur words that no one was there to hear, and hold Hisoka, hoping that whatever memory Hisoka was lost in, he didn't feel Tsuzuki's touch and think only of Muraki. There were a few small signs that stirred hope. Hisoka occasionally spoke, although only odd, disconnected phrases that meant little to Tsuzuki. Sometimes he would become vaguely aware of his surroundings, although it had hurt Tsuzuki deeply to see Hisoka flinch at his touch.

"It's not really you," Watari had reassured him. Tsuzuki looked away, and didn't correct Watari and remind him that none of them really knew what Hisoka saw at all.

On the fourth day, Hisoka woke up in the middle of the night, suddenly thrown out of his dreams with a shock like landing in cool water. He came awake abruptly and sat up, his mind clearer than it had been in a long time. There was no sign of anything that might have disturbed him. Tsuzuki was asleep, his breathing deep and even, and nothing amiss in the comfortable mess of his bedroom. There was near-absolute silence, but Hisoka couldn't shake the feeling that he had just woken up as some signal had ended, the last traces still reverberating the air just too low for him to quite hear. Everything was so confusing now. He couldn't hold onto a thought before it fell to dust and was gone. But something had called him, and he pushed the blankets back from the bed and left the room. If anyone had been there to see him, they might have thought of a sleepwalker, his eyes unfocused as he moved in a near-trance.

The silence was too thick outside the room. It wasn't the stillness that came with midnight, but an unnatural, heavy quietness that was almost suffocating. There should always be small noises from the others in the building; creaks from floorboards, electric hums and whirrs and distant voices. Hisoka stopped just outside the bedroom and pressed his fingertips into his temples, trying to collect his scattered thoughts. He could feel the wall against his side, but that seemed no more real than anything else that had happened over the last few days. He had a sick feeling that no one else was there in the world, that even if he smashed something or overturned some furniture, Tsuzuki would not awake.

Reluctantly, he made his way out of the apartment, drawn on inexorably by something he couldn't understand. The door was unlocked and swung open of its own accord as he brushed it with his fingertips and left the building. It was the darkest time of night. There was no electrical lights either, and a small sound escaped Hisoka. Something wasn't right here. The sky was as heavy as black plush and it suddenly seemed too low, pressing him between skies and earth. It felt as though he could reach up and touch that soft, dense darkness.

The only light in the sky came from a low, red moon.

Hisoka crossed back into the world of the living without thought or intent. There was nothing there either- no street lights, no late night clubbers, no twenty four hour shops or traffic in the roads. The moon's raw light lit the path ahead, infusing the darkness with a reddish tinge.

He was waiting.

The air against Hisoka's skin was languid and balmy with only the faintest breath stirring the heavy blossom above, yet some unnatural wind whipped Muraki's coat around his tall figure. It fell still as he turned to face the boy. A ripe, low moon spilled bloody light over the scene, yet the red simply seemed to roll off Muraki, as though repelled by the silvery aura that always seems to surround him. He looked as pure and unworldly as he did that first time. Everything calm, everything the pure white of bleached baptismal robes and virginal snow. Despite all the blood spilled by his hands, he still looked untainted.

"I knew you'd come back to me," A voice spilled like quicksilver against the edge of his ear, and he couldn't tell how Muraki had got there so fast. A pale hand brushed back his hair almost gently, white bones overlaid with whiter skin.

He could swear he saw the silver taint wherever Muraki touched him, a faint sheen over his skin like mercury traces. Mercury is a bioaccumulative poison. It builds up inside the victim over time, slowly causing insanity and eventually death. He breathed in Muraki's presence, a scent like he imagined mercury vapours would be. There was something medicinal, stinging and bitter, like spearmint and gin fumes mixed with the smell of antiseptic that never leaves hospitals.

Falling cherry blossom whirled around them in an unnatural wind that Hisoka couldn't feel, creamy pink stained red like spattering blood. The scars flared up in Muraki's presence and began to bleed like stigmata, his back arching in pain as healed skin flayed itself open from the curses scored into it years before. Hisoka turned his head to the side, losing himself in studying the pink blossoms trapped in the long grass, like butterflies come too close to earth. They say that cherry blossom was once pure white and the petals were stained forever when the tree drank the blood from corpses buried below it. He could feel his own blood, heated against his cooling skin and soaking into the ground below him. Muraki caught him somehow as he tries to slip backwards into oblivion, and held him there, on the edge of the world.

"Would you like another curse?" Muraki considered it. The knife is the colour of Muraki's single visible eye, his smile the razor-edge of the knife, and they blur together.

"No, I think I'm quite happy with you the way you are. Although it is tempting to take things just a little further. You can take a great deal of suffering, just like that partner of yours. I think that's why I love you two so much," His voice was almost gentle then. He pulled Hisoka up until he could sit, the raw curse marks drawing a network of pain across his back. Muraki's hair brushed against his face lightly, the brittle strands as fine as tinsel. Hisoka reached up, and watched it wash over his hands like diluted moonlight made tangible. They say the cherry blossom absorbs the blood it touches, but Muraki is still unstained by his years of carnage.

Muraki chuckled under his breath as though guessing his thoughts. He looked up at something Hisoka couldn't see, his pale profile beautiful and cruel against the dark skies. Hisoka couldn't tell what the doctor had seen, and from here all he could see was the dull luminance of Muraki's mechanical eye and that gave away nothing.

"Mr Tsuzuki," Muraki purred, his voice like steel and silk and sex. "I was wondering when you would show up,"

Tsuzuki appeared, walking slowly but purposefully, the breeze ruffling a sheaf of ofuda magic held ready as he sized up the situation. His eyes were hard and glittering and his face set, all angles and shadows in the moonlight. Hisoka didn't seem to be badly hurt, although his robe was damp with blood. His head rested placidly against Muraki's shoulder, his hair bleached by moonlight until it streamed as silver as Muraki's own.

Tsuzuki stopped before them. Muraki's mismatched eyes continued to dissect him, more thoroughly than any scalpel ever could.

"Right now, your eyes remind me of a particular type of amethyst," Muraki said idly. "Siberian amethyst, they call it, although it describes the colour rather than the location. It's a particularly lovely, intense violet, which flashes red when it catches the light. Quite an ..angry colour, but it's also considered the most desirable hue,"

"No games, Muraki," Tsuzuki said. There was a dangerous undercurrent in his voice, and then people might have believed the dark past that Muraki had hinted at, the heritage of otherworld blood coursing through his veins.

"You wear righteous anger well, Mr Tsuzuki," Muraki said lightly. "I suppose you've came for the boy. A pity, perhaps, for his own sake. Some may say your Hisoka would be better left with me. I only killed him, after all. You're the one that completely destroyed him,"

"I didn't-" Tsuzuki faltered for just a second, and it was enough.

"The only time Hisoka was ever happy was when I put him in the ground," Muraki's smile was thin and dangerous. "I rather think he owes me thanks now, don't you?"

"Give him back," Tsuzuki's voice was barely a whisper, the resolve running out of him like water. He looked lost and somehow younger now.

"Give him back? But my dear Tsuzuki, I never took him. The poor child came to me," Muraki said.

"It's not true," Tsuzuki whispered. Hisoka stared dreamily into the distance, his features as dim as a faded black and white photograph in the moon's weak, bleaching light. There was no fear in his unfocused eyes as he rested peacefully against his murderer, and Tsuzuki knew it was true.

"I don't mind if my dolls are broken," Muraki said, tipping Hisoka's face and brushing two fingers over the curve of a cheekbone. "You can tell someone really loves a doll if they've played with it so much it broke,"

A breeze caught Tsuzuki's ofuda magic and carried it away like a butterfly into the darkness. He barely noticed.

Muraki sighed impatiently, and then stood, dusting off his flowing white coat. Hisoka didn't follow, but sat there quietly like a discarded doll. "Oh, you're no fun like this, either of you. Take him back with you," Tsuzuki braced himself, ready, but Muraki walked past him without a backwards look, into the cherry trees. Despite the unbroken white of his hair, skin, clothes, he seemed to dissolve back into the darkness like mist and shadows.

Tsuzuki didn't sleep that night.

He pretended to lie down and let his breathing deepen and slow until he was sure Hisoka was asleep. He then spent the rest of the night sat upright with a sheet of ofuda magic between his fingers, watching over Hisoka. His partner looked almost peaceful for once, some of the tension eased from his drawn features as though some poison had drained. His hair washed across the pillow like pale sand, face upturned to the silvery light and although Tsuzuki's eyes never left Hisoka all night, there was no sign of the nightmares that plagued him.

Muraki didn't come to the apartment, and truthfully Tsuzuki never thought he would. He felt a stab of guilt as he watched over Hisoka and wondered how he had hurt his partner so badly that he would be driven to seek comfort with his own murderer.


	5. Chapter 5

Meltdown

Author's Notes- It's taken a little longer to update than expected. Just as this was coming up towards the final couple of chapters, I noticed how much Tatsumi resembled a rather attractive teacher I had about eight years ago. I couldn't get the idea out of my head, decided to finally climb aboard the school AU bandwagon and promptly wrote down the plans for a 9 or 10 chapter fic. Anyway, it took a few days to calm down and get back to working on this, but here it is.

Disclaimer- I don't own any of the recognisable characters or concepts. No profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended.

Hisoka was beginning to deteriorate.

Two weeks had passed since it all began. Watari tried to remain optimistic and tell Tsuzuki there hadn't been any statistically significant changes, but Tsuzuki was noticing the signs. After Hisoka had came back from Muraki, there were two days when he seemed to recover slightly. In those times, Tsuzuki almost thought he could see a trace of the real Hisoka when he looked into his partner's eyes, something flickering there like a ghost trapped behind a thin layer of green glass, just out of reach. The day after meeting Muraki, he had woke up distressed and spent most of the next morning clinging to Tsuzuki, although he still didn't speak or acknowledge Tsuzuki's voice. On the following afternoon, Hisoka had followed him voluntarily rather than be left behind. Then he had began to slip steadily away again.

The silence between them was near-unbroken now, and when Hisoka did speak, it was cryptic, disjointed phrases that made no sense. It had broken Tsuzuki's heart each and every time his partner woke up distressed and there was nothing he could do to reach him and ease the pain, but now he almost began to look for those signs. At least it was proof that Hisoka hadn't withdrawn into himself entirely.

The revelation came to Tsuzuki in the middle of the night.

He sat up straight in his room, the moon streaming silver over white sheets and walls, and for a second it could have been a faraway hospital room a human lifetime ago, a memory of eight long years drifting into and out of insanity. He glanced over at Hisoka, who was awake again, his arms wrapped around his knees and his eyes leeched of their colour by the moonlight. Hisoka's smile was dreamy and lost.

"Muraki," Tsuzuki said.

- - -

Watari wasn't convinced when Tsuzuki proposed the idea the next day.

"It's possible, I suppose," He looked troubled, and Tsuzuki could tell the scientist feared for his sanity. "Muraki has undoubtably pushed the barriers of medical science further than anyone else, but it's due to his _flagrant_ disregard for ethics and human life- Tsuzuki, I really don't think this is a good idea. He'd love seeing you in pain like this. Who's to say he won't hurt Hisoka more just on a whim?"

"He said we were boring like this," Tsuzuki said. "Muraki likes to draw his games out as far as he can," He didn't finish the sentence, but like all of them, Watari suspected that Tsuzuki's recovery hinged upon Hisoka's own. There was a strange sort of logic in it, after all. Muraki's games tore them all apart, and perhaps the doctor would put them back together, if only so he could ruin them all over again.

"We've come too far for this," Tsuzuki said, and turned away from the pity in Watari's eyes.

He tried a location spell, unsure if it would really work, but the white bird he summoned fluttered back barely fifteen minutes later with a scroll of paper held in its claws. He took it and found a location and time written in Muraki's beautiful kanji, the pale silvery ink ghostlike on the white paper.

Muraki had chosen an elegant cafe to meet in, later that day. Tsuzuki worked throughout the morning, partly to get Tatsumi's accounts balanced before he left, and partly to distract himself from the upcoming meeting. In the afternoon, he took Hisoka back to Watari's laboratory and left him there. The scientist was in the middle of some experiment or other, but Tsuzuki couldn't feel too guilty about interrupting. There were more important things at stake.

Muraki showed up exactly on time, not a minute early or late.

"Good evening, Mr Tsuzuki," Muraki greeted him, taking his seat with the languid grace of a predator. "I see you haven't brought your doll with you. You really are getting too old for such toys,"

"How do I get Hisoka back?"

Muraki looked amused and raised one hand to summon a waitress. "Really now, you know my speciality lies in breaking people, not putting them back together. I have very little interest in the field of psychiatry. Save for psychosurgery- I have made certain advancements there that you may find ..intriguing,"

"You were obsessed with one particular patient of your grandfather's," Tsuzuki said. "A patient who was insane more often than not. Keeping him relatively sane would be in your own interests,"

Muraki sighed. "Very well. I can't say I owe you any favours after our latest encounters- the scar is quite beautiful by the way, I have decided to keep it- but it _would_ be a shame to end things so soon," He paused, a secretive smile on his thin lips, drawing out the moment. Tsuzuki crossed his arms and waited, trying to keep his features impassive.

"Hisoka is lost in memories, Mr Tsuzuki. Nothing can reach him there and he doesn't want to hurt any more. But if you can persuade.. or perhaps, _force_ him to revisit some of those memories, then maybe he will have to confront them," Muraki paused. "Or perhaps he'll just go catatonic forever. I can't say I care which happens,"

"The locations of his memories, then?" Tsuzuki asked, leaning forward. "Where would they be?"

"Well goodness, _I_ don't know," Muraki raised an elegant eyebrow. "I have no interest in rummaging through his mind. That was never where my interest in Hisoka lay," He smiled, but Tsuzuki refused to take the bait. He nodded curtly, stood and turned to leave the cafe.

"I won't attack you now," He told Muraki without looking at him. "That's my end of the bargain,"

"A shame," Muraki mused. "I was looking forward to another of our encounters. Oh, and Mr Tsuzuki?"

"Yes?" He asked, still not turning around.

"How rude. And I'm giving you this one for free, as well," There was a small irritated sigh, and then Muraki continued. He could sense the doctor's mismatched eyes burning into his unguarded back, but he remained where he was.

"You may have already noticed Hisoka is somewhat more than an empath,"

Tsuzuki had noticed. He remembered the way Hisoka could pick up traces of the past from objects, and had directly shared the memories of other people rather than simply reading their emotions. There was something else there.

"He appears to be mildly telepathic. You may wish to try and establish a link with him while you're taking your tour of Hisoka's little psychodramas. You could be.. oh, an anchor if you will,"

"Thank you," He said stiffly.

"Oh, don't be," Muraki said, amused. "It'll probably just ruin your own mind as well. And if it doesn't, it will be much more fun to torment the two of you at once,"

- - -

Tsuzuki didn't tell Tatsumi or Watari, or anyone else in the Summons Department. He could already predict their reaction, to remind him that Muraki was the purest kind of sadist and that no one ever came out of his games unscarred. He didn't want to explain his motivations for taking Hisoka back to these places, to admit to himself or anyone else that he was gambling everything on one last toss of the dice. Tsuzuki left a note on his door explaining that Hisoka was having a bad spell, and he had decided to take the boy home and settle him. They slipped away at a time when he had predicted there would be few other shinigami around.

"Here we are, Hisoka,"

There was the tiniest flicker of a reaction from Hisoka, a tightening in his shoulders and a murmur that Tsuzuki had to lean in close to catch, the words barely stirring the air.

"Please.. I don't want to,"

"I know," Tsuzuki wrapped his arm around Hisoka's shoulders and felt the tension there, in a puzzle of fragile bone and sinews pulled as taut as bow strings. "I can't make you any promises, Hisoka, and I wouldn't lie to you. This isn't going to be easy,"

They stood in front of the gates. Hisoka wasn't resisting any more. His eyes had faded, the colour of dark jade artifacts from dynasties long since fallen.

Tsuzuki was no empath, but the house they faced looked unlived in for somewhere that Hisoka had spent thirteen years of his short life inside. Homes were places where people loved, lived, left traces of their past impressed lightly in the air. Their ghosts could be sensed, a presence like cobwebs sifting softly against a listening mind.

There was nothing here. Hisoka tangled his fingers fretfully through the iron bars of the gates next to him, rust and paint flaking away against his palms. Tsuzuki studied him closely, half-hoping for and half-fearing a reaction like Hisoka had shown under the cherry blossom. But no memory trace jolted through him, no ghosts from his past rising from the attractive gardens or the big, handsome house in front of him. He couldn't remember skinning his knees on the gravel, coming back home through these gates with a school bag weighing heavily on his shoulders, the view from any of the visible windows.

Of course, he hadn't seen it from the front for many years before his death. As he got older, it was increasingly difficult for his parents to write off his empathy as an overactive imagination. They had discreetly found him home tutors, taken him out of education and stopped bringing him on any of the small outings a mother might bring her child along for. He had been free to explore the gardens, but Hisoka didn't remember coming around the front of the house. His parents' disapproval had made it clear that he should stay out of sight without any need for a direct order.

"Come on. There's nothing here," Tsuzuki said gently, his hand guiding Hisoka forward when it was clear nothing would happen there. He let the pair of them fade back into spirit form, becoming nothing more than a collection of thoughts and concepts suspended somewhere outside the reality of the physical world. They passed through the gates, and he saw a sudden look of uneasy recognition cross Hisoka's features, an intruder in his own home.

Tsuzuki stopped them as he heard a voice, a light feminine murmur he couldn't make out. She appeared from around the side of the house.

She was still a beautiful woman. The syrupy afternoon sunlight didn't catch a single silver thread in her glossy black hair, and from this distance Tsuzuki would have placed her as being in her mid twenties. She had lovely, rather aristocratic features and was exquisitely dressed with diamonds sparkling at her pale throat. Hisoka's mother had been married young, and she was still a year or two shy of her fortieth year although her son would have been an adult if he had survived. Grief hadn't taken its toll.

As she walked directly through him, Hisoka saw her face closer than he had for years in life, and for a second, a flicker of recognition showed in his eyes. She had always been a distant mother, married and pregnant as soon as she completed the minimum of education required for a respectable woman. Perhaps that was why she had always been so cool towards him. Up close, they could see that at last the tiniest tracing of feathery lines were just beginning to dust the outlines of her almond eyes. It suddenly occurred to Tsuzuki how bitterly ironic it was, that Hisoka was now forever young and beautiful, his physical self frozen in time. He wondered if she would envy her son if she knew.

Hisoka's mother swept right through them. Hisoka was trembling slightly, and Tsuzuki's heart leaped at this small sign of acknowledgment. But he couldn't leave it here. The gardens held little nostalgia for Hisoka, and there were worse memories inside the house that they would have to face.

Into the home, from the fragrant gardens into cool, neutral air. Hisoka came obediently, and didn't appear to show any recognition when they stood just inside the front door. Tsuzuki wasn't surprised when he glanced around at the neat, lifeless house. He couldn't even detect a noticeable scent. Homes always had a signature scent, a combination of a mother's perfume, particular spices used in the kitchens, the warm organic fug from a pet dog. He lead Hisoka into the living room. It was beautifully decorated, but completely unlived in. There were no newspapers or half-empty teacups left scattered around, and all the framed pictures showed tasteful watercolour scenes, no family or friends caught in blurry, amateur snaps.

"Be brave," Tsuzuki said, and hoped Hisoka could hear him.

Hisoka breathed in deeply and suddenly shuddered against Tsuzuki's side as he let the world slowly change around him as he picked up on the traces of old pain that forever marked the places where people lived and died. He needed to understand.

He saw his parents returning after his funeral, his mother pale and rather shaken, his father's face sombre and somehow older than before. His empathy picked up on a lingering sadness, a sense of regret, and he knew they weren't some fairytale monsters or wicked stepparents. It might have made things easier for Hisoka if they were, but he'd learned enough in his short afterlife to know people didn't really work that way. Even the Tsuzukis of this world had their own dark secrets, and the most ordinary people could do terrible things out of fear or ignorance. Fortunately for the world, there were very few true sadists like Muraki around.

Hisoka picked up traces of the days following. There were no great revelations made during that time. They mourned, they moved on. They didn't dance on his grave or ever voice the uncomfortable feeling that perhaps this way really was for the best, no matter how tragic it should be to lose the only son and heir and the future head of their family line. And at last, they began to heal. The chasm that had always lay between them closed in as some of the fear and unease lifted, although perhaps they would never truly be happy, even without the strange child they'd never wanted.

Tsuzuki waited. He had no idea what was happening, but he could see the agitation crossing Hisoka's face, and he waited until it had passed before leading him onto the most difficult part. Into the kitchen, and the door in the corner swung open with a creak as they descended into the basement.

Hisoka began to struggle violently at this point, as soon as they stood in the doorway and air wet with lifetimes of trapped damp rose up to meet them. Tsuzuki managed to drag him down two steps, slipping on stone coated with algae and rot, the door swinging shut and blotting out the sunlight behind them. He held tight as his partner fought against him, wincing as his face was laid open. Physically, he had stopped maturing at just eighteen, but that long illness before death had left Hisoka shorter and weaker than himself, and he managed to guide the pair of them down the stairs with as little force as possible. Of course, he could simply use magic to restrain him, but that wasn't how it should be. This should be messy and painful and difficult, and Hisoka would fight against it all the way.

This was no place to bring a child, and Tsuzuki shuddered himself. There was no light in the cellar at all, and he had to rest his hand against the wall as they descended to guide them down the stairs. The stones felt unpleasantly slick, coated with something that clung to his fingers in a fine damp film that didn't wipe off. He breathed in deep and recoiled slightly as his lungs were filled with chilled dank air, air that cycled endlessly down here and was never cleared by sunlight or breezes. This was little more than a crypt for the living.

There were things moving, making small wet noises as they slipped and crawled over stone and puddles, but he couldn't see them. The darkness was absolute. It pressed into his eyes, so thick it was almost tangible, and he closed them rather than let it seep inside him. Tsuzuki could see how a small child's imagination would run wild here where bloated, albino things grew and swelled in their mind until they were more than simple frogs and fungi that thrived in the damp. Hisoka twisted in his grasp again as they reached the bottom of the stairs, nearly dislocating his shoulder. Hating himself for it, Tsuzuki picked him up, carried him to the end of the room and dropped Hisoka alone into the darkness.

Suddenly Tsuzuki was gone. There was one thin, broken noise from Hisoka, perhaps a scream that choked and died somewhere in the soft, wet darkness that flooded into his mouth when he tried to call out. He pushed himself backwards, pushing aside the caved-in ruins of forgotten things that had been stored down here for decades, and shrank against the floor, pressing against the slick stone as if he could sink into it and let himself disappear again. Too many memories were rising up here from wet filmy walls and stagnant puddles, too much trauma that had sank into walls of this place and could never be erased. A ghost of a voice he hadn't heard in years began to rise and scream at him from the stairs, something that had happened so many times it had written itself into the air of the cellar. Here, there was nothing but fear, but beyond that door he couldn't see any more there was hatred and a world that had rejected him. This was where he belonged.

"Come on, Hisoka,"

The brackish air rolled around him, trying to suffocate that distant voice in the sound of distant sobbing and crawling creatures and the sounds of his parents arguing up in the kitchen. There was a distant, dull smack and he knew his father had hit his mother in the argument, and his seven year old self understood completely that it was all his fault. Some small things began to stir and drag themselves out of the wet ruin of old discarded boxes that scattered the cellar, things that were always slick and loathsome and brushed right against him because they had gone blind in the darkness. He curled up and tried to retreat back into oblivion, but the place wouldn't let him go. It was around him and inside him, and he could never get away.

"You don't belong here. You never should have been kept here, but it's all over now,"

The voice sounded terribly far away, but he clung to it. As long as that voice reverberated, the shadows retreated a little, a tiny ray of sunshine trying to cut through the darkness. He didn't care if it was just another of the ghosts of voices forever trapped here, so long as it kept talking. But there was a lot of darkness between them, and Hisoka knew it wasn't just a cellar. It was a place he'd carried around with him for years, a distance that he could never cross to find his way out into the light again.

"It's just an old cellar. There was never even a lock on the door. You can leave any time you want to,"

The memories of distant arguments rose, and he scrabbled backwards, slipping on puddles and something gelatinous which popped underneath his hand with a rush of sticky fluids. The shadows rolled forward gladly, wrapping him in rot and ruin. The accusing words were becoming distant now. His breathing was becoming shallow and rapid, the world falling apart around him. Underneath it all, he could see there was nothing but the same soft damp decay in the cellar underneath his home.

"Any time you want to," The voice repeated itself, sounding very dim now, and he thought of a weak, struggling candle flame that couldn't possibly survive in the damp air down here.

There was no way out of a place like this, he wanted to tell the voice. Some places you carried around inside you, long after their walls had crumbled to dust. He could wander around here forever and never find a way out. But it kept calling out to him, until at last Hisoka stood unsteadily, and took two steps into the darkness towards where he knew the door had been. He wanted to tell the voice to get out of here, before it sank into the decay and ruin too and could never leave again. The air pressed against him, heavy and sulky, but it reluctantly parted and he felt a tiny surge of hope. Another two steps, and he was falling and reaching out all at once, and Tsuzuki was there. He clung to his partner, breathed in his warm, calm presence and felt the place shrink around him again. It was cold and dark and damp, but there was nothing there except the bad memories of a young child.

Tsuzuki guided them back up the stairs and they emerged into the sunlit kitchen. For a second, Hisoka glanced back and wondered if the darkness would rise up and follow them, swallowing him in shadows that no light could ever part. Then they were gone, and he could see nothing but stairs leading down into an old cellar. Tsuzuki felt the slight tickle as the thin scratches on his cheek finished healing over, gone without a trace before they had even left the house. Hisoka pulled himself free from Tsuzuki, who let him go and watched him walk out into the garden.

A car had pulled up outside, and a tall man in a suit emerged. Hisoka's mother came over to greet him. He kissed the air over her cheek, neither of them ever physically touching. Hisoka watched his parents from a distance, his expression slightly pensive. This was no place for him. It was never a place for him, not really.

Tsuzuki walked over to Hisoka's side, and lightly touched his shoulder. A moment passed, and then Hisoka flung himself against Tsuzuki's chest, shaking slightly, but calmer than he had been in a long time. Tsuzuki glanced down. Hisoka's eyes were faintly confused and the pupils still dilated with fear, but there was something questioning there. He leaned forward to brush Hisoka's forehead lightly with a protective kiss, then took his hand to continue guiding them out of the darkness.


	6. Chapter 6

Meltdown

Author's Notes- Sorry about the slightly massive delay- I accidentally left my flash drive behind when visiting some relatives and spent quite a few weeks worrying this was gone for good, along with a lot of other stuff. The last chapter should be uploaded soonish too.

After finishing this chapter, I realised my dates were slightly out. I've mentioned use of electroconvulsive therapy- if I've worked it out right, Tsuzuki probably died in the 1920s while ECT was only properly introduced in the 1930s. I've left it in, since if Muraki's grandfather was slightly ahead of his time, it's not completely implausible that a doctor may have tried it a few years before it was a well-known technique.

Disclaimer- I don't own any of the recognisable characters or concepts. No profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended.

- - -

Tsuzuki didn't go back to the Judgment Bureau. He knew very well what Tatsumi and Watari would say if they knew where he had been, and perhaps they were right. He was no psychologist, but Tsuzuki knew the last thing someone in this state needed was more stress to send the fragile remains of their mind crumpled uselessly inwards. Perhaps he was just driving Hisoka irreversibly into his own memories. But Tsuzuki didn't think he could stop now, even if he wanted to, and part of him did. This was not the easy option. Tsuzuki had been on the run for days now, knowing that as soon as he slowed down, the events from Kyoto would catch up with him. And then, he didn't quite know what would happen.

Tsuzuki didn't stop until Hisoka's home was well out of sight. He glanced back from time to time, watching it retreat into the distance, and sincerely hoped that neither of them would ever have to see it again. They shifted in spirit form to the nearest large town, and paused in a sunlit street, a world away from the cellar and whatever had dragged itself from the pain-soaked walls there. The living streamed by unaware of their presence, the air heavy with the soft noises of traffic and voices gone limp and drowsy with heat. And in the middle of it all, they were there, streaked with dried blood and cellar dirt, Hisoka watching distantly with the shadowed, old/young eyes of a war child.

"Where do we go from here?" Tsuzuki asked, not expecting any answer. He wasn't an empath, but even he felt drained by whatever Hisoka had left behind in the cellar all those years ago. He paused, wondering whether they should wait until the morning. Hisoka's eyes were closed now, the lids bluish with exhaustion, and Tsuzuki frowned over the fragility of the moment, how easily he could slip away like a butterfly taking flight, or a candle snuffed out.

"We can't stop now, right?" he asked, and continued walking, no destination in mind.

Hisoka followed docilely. It felt deeply wrong. Usually, Hisoka was the one striding ahead, map in hand, snapping at Tsuzuki as he dawdled behind, distracted by street vendors and shop windows. Tsuzuki gave a small, tired smile. He'd existed for almost a century, and only now he realised how much he'd sought guidance from his younger partner sometimes.

"I've been thinking about it. There's two places left," Tsuzuki said, more to himself than anything. "You already went back to the cherry blossom, didn't you?" He paused, and wondered again if this was one of Muraki's games.

"So, I think it's probably the hospital, and the laboratory," Tsuzuki continued. "You made this very difficult, you know? You were- you're always so good at keeping everything locked up. But you're not as good as you think you are. Whenever you talk about your death, I can see how painful it must have been. And the laboratory is where it all began."

"I don't know if it's enough," Tsuzuki spoke up again, after a minute or two's reflection. "It's frightening how little we know about each other. I don't know what else happened to you, if maybe the other children bullied you, or if you were in an accident, or-" He shrugged helplessly. "Well, I suppose that'll have to change, whether you like it or not. You know my secrets." He paused to check a road sign, still talking to himself. "I spent eight years lost in insanity. It's not a good place to be."

There was one large, private hospital nearby. That had to be it. Near enough for Hisoka's parents to travel to, far enough away that the local villagers wouldn't work there and carry back gossip, expensive enough for the son of a long lineage. Tsuzuki paused in the hospital foyer, completely lost. The living streamed past, oblivious to their presence.

Hisoka walked past him. Tsuzuki reached out and caught his shoulder, only to be shrugged off as Hisoka turned into one of the corridors. It grew quieter and cooler the further they went, from the busy children's wards, into a sudden hush deep inside the hospital. Tsuzuki felt a slight prickle as they went through a ward there. There were shapes under the thin white blankets, but there was no sound except the mild beeping of machines and he sensed no-one there at all.

The room could have been occupied. No, it _should_ have been occupied. It shouldn't have been left empty, the door open, the bed made and a vase of flowers left by the bedside. Not flowers, Tsuzuki saw, as they approached the bed. It was just a branch of cherry blossom that had been broken off, so recently there was a tacky bead of sap still bleeding fresh at the tip. Cherry blossom wasn't even in season, not here in the world of the living.

Tsuzuki's own hand tightened around Hisoka's as he remembered. It would be so easy to come back to a place like this, one day. Some things had changed. He remembered a wooden-framed bed, and now this one was sleek and metal, adjusting position and height at the touch of a button. There was machinery besides the bed that he had never seen before, and a slim TV screen swung down from the wall. But they were the same places, in the end.

Most of the memories there were fragmented, little bits and pieces of reality small enough to slip through the fire and smoke that choked up his dreams, except they probably weren't called dreams when your eyes were wide open and they still played on. He remembered small insignificant things, the taste of barbiturates melting to bitter sludge down his throat, or the distant sting of a hypodermic needle that seemed further away than the tiny pinpricks of stars. Electroconvulsive therapy, a sudden sizzle of white lightning searing away everything for one blissful moment, filling his mind with the raw fire of a sun going supernova. He'd always wished it would consume everything, leave behind nothing to ever wake up again. But the fire always burned out and left him behind with nothing but the far-away ache of knotted pain up and down his spine, wrists stripped skinless from the leather straps that held him down, a faint ironwater taste from a mouth full of blood and chipped teeth.

Tsuzuki reached out to Hisoka. As his fingers brushed the shinigami's shoulder, there was a sudden sense of falling, of something invisible melting softly away, of bright ghosts rising from the walls and the murmur of voices in the small room.

_What happened, doctor?  
__Your son is very sick. Some sort of autoimmune disorder, perhaps. We've called specialists in-_

The voices were remote and somehow _flattened_, like a cheap tinny radio playing too far away to care about. Hisoka watches blurred shapes swim before his eyes, shapeless, faceless patches of whites and greens that might have been people, once. He tries to raise his head enough to see, but the message is left sizzling down nerves that don't respond any more. Each small movement he manages is followed by great arthritic jags of pain. They want to know what happened, and he can't tell them, can't remember anything before waking up, sick and cold in morning dew.

Now the chill has turned to fever, stoked fires turning over slowly up and down his bones. The air in the room is cool, but it can't touch fire like this. This isn't combustion, it's _inflammation_, something infected deep inside breaking him down into hot rolling ruin. He arches his back slowly, soft overwashed cotton grating on raw nerves wherever it touches, as though it might scrape away tiny pieces of himself with it. When the tears finally come, there's no relief there either. They roll up syrupy-warm, leave blazing tar trails in their wake wherever they touch.

_Doesn't he know we're here?  
__He's on quite high doses of morphine. It's unlikely that he's really aware of anything.  
__His eyes are open. Why won't he-  
__Catatonia, maybe.  
__-we thought perhaps ..autism when he was younger. He was a strange boy-  
__We suspect some sort of neurodegenerative disorder. They're very rare at his age, but not unheard of_

_Neurodegeneration  
_Hisoka turns the word over, the syllables fracturing and slipping away from him each time the headaches come, in great shuddering waves of pain that sweep over him like a red sea. Sometimes they carry him away into oblivion, and sometimes it breaks over his head in dazzles of pain that splinter his world into shards and splinters.

Whenever he manages to catch that thought and ride it out, long enough for the headache to subside, the same uneasy images come to mind. _Dementia_. Hisoka isn't old enough to grasp the mechanisms behind it, but he can picture the grooves in his brain opening up like cracks in the parched earth, tissue shrinking to dried-up flaky grey sponge, the holes that will appear as his mind is slowly eaten away to nothing but sputtering, tangled neurons.

_Is there any cure, doctor?  
__I'm sorry. I'm afraid no-one really knows.  
__He doesn't even know we're here. Come on-. _

There's nothing else to watch in the room, and so he watches the roses, dim and distant and blurred like underwater creatures. Just close enough for him to make out the outlines of the heavy blossoms and see that they're red and white roses, red on white on red over and over again. He doesn't know if they're from his parents, but there's no-one else to send him flowers. And they're certainly lush and expensive enough, a nice gesture for some nurse to admire. Red roses are for passion. White roses are for purity. It's not something a parent would give to their sick son, but Hisoka wouldn't be surprised if they simply picked the first expensive arrangement they saw. Red on white on red on white-

Something stirs in his mind, something red and white over and over again, but he can't find the answer amongst the puzzle of thorns and velvet plush petals.

_Helpmehelpmehelpmehelpme_

He listens to the last incoherent thoughts flung out from patients brought in from car accidents and house fires, thrown out wildly for anyone to hear. A hospital is a bad place for an empath.

Hisoka comes to know some of them, and perhaps that's all that keeps him from going insane, trapped there in the falling-apart husk of flesh and bone. Sometimes there is even brief respite. There's screaming red pain from the maternity wards, but it's tempered with the serene wash of relief moments later, and a sudden wave of overwhelming protectiveness so fierce it almost hits him harder than the pain. Alongside that, there's the puzzled, mewling mind of something awakening, forced from the safe, pulsing world it knew. The harsh coldness of air hits it like water, searing its new lungs until it keeps breathing so long the air becomes a part of it. Hisoka knows now that birth is a little like drowning.

Sometimes, they welcome death, like the stillness that hangs over the geriatric ward. He feels the shame, from a war veteran, who can no longer make it to the bathroom alone, a former beauty watching herself decay. Hisoka is almost glad for those whose minds begin to fall softly apart, sparing them some of the aching loneliness of dying old and alone. At least, until their memories are lost forever and a woman who raised six children stares blankly at these middle-aged strangers who bring her flowers.

Near his own ward, there's peaceful, blank nothingness from those trapped in a coma. It's not so bad when he can pretend there's nothing left there any more, at least until he feels the struggling of a mind trying to break free, beating like a butterfly in its own cage. Further down, and there's the childrens' ward. Some of them are already half-eaten by cancers, but their thoughts are bright amongst the rest, still young enough to appreciate ice-cream or a visit from a magician. The youngest fear death the least. He listens to the echoing of their thoughts, the matter-of-fact voice of a young girl telling another that she doesn't care if she wasn't invited to someone's birthday party, she'd be dead by Christmas anyway.

Further away from that, and a girl is dying some floors below him. The burns ward. He can feel the raw agony each and every time they change her bandages, and she could live with the pain from gauze sticking to tacky flesh and dead skin stripped from open wounds that will never heal. It's the fleeting traces of revulsion that she can't stand, the look on the nurse's faces that she can't avoid when they remove the damp tissue from her eyes, can't look away because the eyelids were the first part of her face to burn away.

_What nice flowers, Hisoka! I'll just bring some fresh water-_

The nurses think they're talking to themselves, but they carry on anyway. They think its for his sake, but Hisoka knows better. They talk to fill the bleak silence in the rooms of the terminally ill. He listens to their commentary anyway, not in any position to take or leave their pity, and sometimes it's the only way he knows that anyone is there at all. He can feel their faint sadness as they gently turn him over, and change the morphine that does nothing to cool the slow burn at his core. They feel for him, but there are really too many patients for them to ever care so much about the strange dying boy locked away in his private room.

Hisoka's eyes open, sticky and blurred, the muscles around them near-paralysed. He thinks of rusty windows racheting open. He can tell by the tightening of the nurse's face that his eyes look as vacant as a doll's.

_He doesn't even know we're here._

No one replaced the flowers. He watches the scarlet fade from lush, candyapple red to the faint brown of old bloodstains, the last spot of colour in the room gone. The white discolours to a nostalgic tea-stain yellow, until there's nothing but a tissue-dry, corpse husk. When a nurse moves them the next day, they crumble, and then there's nothing but the spicy, dry withered scent of things fallen apart to paper. No one came back.

_Unidentified adolescent-onset neurodegeneration. Cause unknown.  
__Ataxia has progressed. Complete quadiplegia observed.  
__Irreversible catatonia suspected_

The roses are long gone, but there's cherry blossom besides the bed one day. Not a formal arrangement, just a branch someone's snapped off and bound with red ribbon, bound over and over again like bandages, as if they could ever fix the wounded limb. The scarlet swims blurred before his eyes, fractured by white petals. His eyes have gone too dim to make out any more, and the faint scent of blossom is lost under the antiseptic and clean laundry smell of hospital air.

_Three years..  
__you'll die beautiful, I promise_

A hand touched his forehead lightly, impersonally. He thought of a kiss of sparks from steel on steel, and then a second later the pain came exploding forth, as though an invisible network of heated wires was suddenly drawn tight. The sting of a needle sliding into the crook of his elbow was lost against it. A series of images flashed through Hisoka's mind- pain bursting, fireworks blossoming, spilling out scarlet into skies, white skies, and it would be red on white on red. That's right. That night, the moon-

_The moon bled for me._

It was impossibly low, almost low enough to reach out and touch it, if he could move. And if he touched it, his fingers would sink right in, a moon ripe and swollen like a rotten strawberry, about to burst and spill sticky syrupy rot over the cherry blossom branches that fractured the skies above. It had pulsed in time with the waves of wet warmth that had broke over him. A heart, a womb, a tumour, an eye, and none of those at all. There had been nothing and no-one else there to watch him die that night, just the glazed-over eyes of a dead girl and the red moon-

_??? What moon ???  
__You can scream if you like. No one can hear you._

The pain subsided, black waves of it rolling back uneasily to slip below the surface of the inexorable burn that he feels every day. And now Hisoka knows it was there all along, waiting, only ever needing a word to bring it back out. The last fragmented images begin to break up and slip away again. The voice slips into his mind, smooth and cool like oil over still waters, and he doesn't want it to end. He doesn't even care what happened between them underneath the bleeding moon, not when he's drowning in here and this is the only person to ever reach him. The voice fades away, brushing against his fevered mind like cool silk.

_Absence of cerebrally modulated motor responses to pain in all extremities.  
__Electroencephalogram reveals total loss of activity outside brain stem.  
__Patient is considered to be in a permanent vegetative status_

_I died that night_

Hisoka was fourteen when he accepted that he was already dead. He took longer to accept it than some of the children on the ward below him, less time than some of the adults who went on denying it until their last breath. Perhaps he'd have held out longer if there had been something to keep on living for. He didn't care for much any more, just wanted the pain to stop, and if he couldn't rise out of it, then he didn't care if he would sink into it instead. Keep on sinking into the heart of the bonfire, until it had flayed away everything and there would be nothing left to feel pain any more.

There wasn't so much of Hisoka left now. He sometimes listened, dimly, to far-away voices that broke over his head like a wave and disintegrated into meaningless foam. He knew a physiotherapist came and manipulated his limbs like a doll, but he felt nothing save a dull racketing ache, joints snapping and creaking like wood in a bonfire. The outside world was fading away as the fever rose up, stoked fires eating away at him. Towards the end, he treasured every last feeling that still crept through. The cool dab of a cloth wiping his sticky, matted eyelashes, the brush of clean cotton as he was lifted, even the dull tugging as an IV was changed.

_Total loss of functional brain stem activity.  
Patient was declared clinically brain-dead at three am. _

Not much longer now, Hisoka supposed. He didn't even breath for himself any more. He couldn't see the machine that kept him alive, but sometimes he'd hear the distant hiss of it, feel the corresponding rise and fall of his own chest, lungs that threatened to collapse together like gluey tissue paper if the air wasn't forced into them. Air that kept fanning the fever, but soon there would be nothing left but fire and ashes. Hisoka didn't fear death any more. This was how being buried alive must feel.

_Ventilator and drug support withdrawn at family request.  
__Cardiac death declared at seven pm. _

Tsuzuki didn't realise his own breath had slowed and stopped altogether, the world turning sticky and red and formless around him. The hospital room they had entered was back, but lost behind the fog blackening out his vision. He blinked frantically, a sudden jolt of adrenaline hitting him as air wouldn't come, his chest constricting and slowly clamping down to trap his struggling mind in an airless cage shutting down around it. Then it finally came, cool antiseptic air flooding his lungs as he broke the surface like a drowning man.

Another deep breath, to steady himself. "They took you off life support."

And Tsuzuki wasn't sure if it was Hisoka answering, if he'd filled in the blanks himself or if it was the last fading traces of whatever memory drifted forever in this room, tethered by fire and pain, but the answer came anyway and it didn't matter who had gave it voice.

_I was already dead_


End file.
